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Guide

How to Use

Everything you need to know to get the most out of the Filmography Tracker.

Getting Started
1
Pick someone from the homepage

Tap any actor or director card on the homepage. That opens their full filmography tracker.

2
Check off everything you've seen

Scroll past the graph to the film checklist and tap the checkbox next to any movie you've seen. This is important — the whole graph is built around what you have and haven't watched. Everything saves automatically in your browser, no account needed.

3
Take a first look at the Quadrant graph

Every film is a dot. The further right it is, the bigger the box office. The higher up, the better the IMDb rating. Tap any dot to see the film's details. Before you do anything else, just poke around and get a feel for where things land — you'll need that sense when you calibrate the lines in the next step.

Tap empty space in the graph to zoom in. On mobile you can also pinch zoom.

4
Calibrate the axis lines to your taste

Two lines divide the graph into four quadrants. By default they sit in the middle of each axis — but "the middle" doesn't mean much until it's personal. Move them until the quadrants match how you actually feel about these movies.

The Box Office line — an example with Denzel

Out of the box, Training Day shows up as a Hidden Gem — meaning the graph thinks it underperformed for its quality. But Training Day is one of Denzel's landmark films. I want it in gold. So I use the Box Office Line slider to drag the vertical line leftward until Training Day flips to Landmark.

Training Day showing as Hidden Gem by default

Default — Training Day is Hidden Gem

Training Day now showing as Landmark after moving the Box Office line

After sliding BO line left — now Landmark

The IMDb line

Now move the IMDb Line slider. Set it at the lowest-rated movie you personally still enjoy — that becomes your floor. Everything below it is a Skip, everything above is fair game. For me that's The Little Things (6.4 on IMDb). It starts out as a Skip; after I move the line down to meet it, it flips to Hidden Gem.

The Little Things showing as Skip before IMDb line adjustment

Before — The Little Things is a Skip

The Little Things now showing as Hidden Gem after IMDb line adjustment

After — now Hidden Gem

5
Now explore — specifically the films you haven't seen

Tap the dots to inspect movies. Tap empty space to zoom in. The empty (hollow) dots are films you haven't seen yet — those are your watchlist waiting to happen. Solid filled dots are films you've already marked as seen.

6
Read the quadrants
Landmark Hidden Gem Overrated Skip

Landmark unseen = must watch. High rated, big box office, and you haven't seen it — these are the ones you owe yourself. In my Denzel example that's The Pelican Brief, Déjà Vu, and The Magnificent Seven.

The Pelican Brief highlighted as unseen Landmark

The Pelican Brief · 1993

Déjà Vu highlighted as unseen Landmark

Déjà Vu · 2006

The Magnificent Seven highlighted as unseen Landmark

The Magnificent Seven · 2016

Hidden Gems are where you find the stuff you missed — good movies that flew under the radar commercially. Worth digging into.

Overrated might still be worth watching if you love the person, or just because some of these are so culturally everywhere that you kind of have to. (Notice that none of Denzel's films are Overrated in my setup — because he is the man.)

Skip is probably safely skippable. Even the best actors and directors make the occasional stinker, often for reasons outside their control.

7
Now go out there and explore

Pick a filmmaker or actor you love — or one you've always been curious about — and start working through their filmography. There are films in here waiting to become new favorites.

The Four Views
Chart Tab 1
Quadrant — The Big Picture
Every film is plotted by IMDb rating (vertical) against inflation-adjusted box office (horizontal). A crosshair divides the plot into four zones:
Landmark Hidden Gem Overrated Skip
Use the IMDb Line and Box Office Line sliders to move the crosshair and redefine the thresholds. The default is the midpoint of each axis — adjust it until the zones feel right to you.
Triangles are direct-to-streaming films. They never had a theatrical box office, so their left–right position can't be a real gross — instead it's estimated from how many IMDb votes they've drawn relative to the person's theatrical films (a rough proxy for how widely each was seen). Treat a triangle's horizontal spot as approximate; its IMDb height is real.
Chart Tab 2
Curve — Graded on a Curve
Each film is graded against this filmmaker's own track record. A regression curve fits the relationship between commercial performance and critical reception across their whole filmography. Films are then judged relative to where that curve would put them:
Underrated — rated more highly than their commercial performance would predict Fair — right where you'd expect Overrated — made more than its quality seems to warrant
A film marked Underrated didn't find the commercial audience that their better-reviewed work usually does — it punched above its weight critically. Overrated means the opposite: it sold well by their standards, but audiences weren't as enthusiastic as the box office might suggest. Because the curve is calibrated to each filmmaker individually, verdicts are relative — a film that would be Overrated in Nolan's filmography might be perfectly Fair in someone else's.
The Line Offset and Fair Band Width sliders let you widen or shift the fair zone. Calibrate to anchors the curve to a specific film you consider fairly rated.
Chart Tab 3
IMDb Over Time
Plots each film's IMDb rating by year of release. A trend line shows whether critical reception improved or declined over the course of a career. Useful for spotting creative peaks and late-career reinventions.
Chart Tab 4
Box Office Over Time
Plots inflation-adjusted box office by year. All grosses are converted to 2024 dollars using CPI data, so you're comparing real commercial impact — not just raw numbers inflated by decades of ticket price increases.
Controls Reference
Filter buttons (All / Seen / Unseen)
Filters both the chart dots and the film list at the same time. Seen shows only films you've marked; Unseen shows your watchlist. The filter applies across all chart tabs.
Sort (Year / Alpha / IMDb / Gross / Verdict)
Reorders the film list below the charts. Verdict sorts by the active chart's verdict — useful for finding the most underrated films at a glance.
Calibrate to [film]
Only films you've marked as seen appear in this menu. In the Curve tab, pick a film you think is fairly rated — the curve shifts so that film lands exactly in the fair zone. In the Quadrant tab, the crosshair moves to that film's position. Both are ways to personalize the view to your own taste rather than trusting the raw average.
Export / Import
Export saves your seen list as a small JSON snippet you can copy. Import lets you paste it back — handy if you switch browsers or want to share your watch history with someone else.
Tapping dots on mobile
Tap anywhere on the chart to select the nearest dot. If several films are clustered together, tap again in the same area to cycle through them one by one. Tap empty space to deselect.
Filled dots vs. outlined dots — and triangles
Filled markers are films you haven't seen yet; outlined ones are films you've marked as seen. Circles are theatrical releases; triangles are direct-to-streaming films, whose horizontal position is estimated from audience engagement rather than box office. Everything is visible at once; the filter buttons can isolate seen/unseen.
Frequently Asked
Is my data saved between visits?
Yes — everything is stored in your browser's localStorage. No account, no server. If you clear your browser data, your history will be lost. Use the Export button to keep a backup.
Why are box office numbers adjusted for inflation?
A $100M film in 1990 was a much bigger deal than a $100M film in 2024. Adjusting everything to 2024 dollars using CPI data puts films from different eras on a fair footing, so you can actually compare commercial impact across decades.
What does R² mean on the chart?
R² (R-squared) measures how well the trendline fits the data — in other words, how strongly IMDb rating and box office are correlated for this particular filmography. A high R² means the two track closely together; a low one means critical reception and commercial success are largely independent.
Why is [film] missing?
Each tracker covers major theatrical releases. Short films, TV movies, cameos, and very limited releases are generally excluded. If something feels like a significant omission, email filmography.tracker@gmail.com.
Can I suggest someone to add?
Yes — email filmography.tracker@gmail.com with your suggestion. Actors and directors both welcome.
The Origin Story

It started with License to Wed. Not a critical darling, not a film anyone puts on a best-of list — but watching it was a genuine pleasure. And it led to a question: what other Robin Williams films have I never seen?

Robin Williams made 36 major films. Most people have seen the obvious ones — Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society. But scattered across his filmography are films that got lost in the noise: underseen, underrated, or simply forgotten.

There's also something uniquely meaningful about working through the filmography of an actor who has passed away. Their body of work is complete. Finite. Every film you haven't seen yet is a gift still waiting — a new encounter with someone whose work you love, even though they're gone.

Working through a complete filmography turns out to be one of the best ways to find films you'd love but never knew existed. This app is built around that feeling.